"Five Signs Mitt Romney’s Campaign Is Crumbling" at The National Memo

[applegrove]

Five Signs Mitt Romney’s Campaign Is Crumbling

at The National Memo

http://www.nationalmemo.com/five-signs-mitt-romneys-campaign-is-crumbling/

"SNIP..............................................

Romney's Advantage On Economic Issues Is Gone

The most powerful lingering effect of President Bill Clinton's highly praised speech at the Democratic National Convention was the way it wrested the economic advantage in this race from Mitt Romney. After the president's campaign laid a foundation by questioning Romney's career at Bain and record in Massachusetts, Clinton was able to connect the GOP nominee to the failed "policies that got us into this mess." Washington Post's Greg Sargent notes, "Eight recent national polls, and several polls in the key swing states, show that Obama has now pulled into a tie with Romney on handling the economy."

........................................

Inventing Gaffes, Ignoring Policies

As former Bush speechwriter David Frum asked, "How do you message: I'm doing away with Medicaid over the next 10 yrs, Medicare after that, to finance a cut in the top rate of tax to 28 percent?" The answer is, you can't. Mitt Romney's hope was to appease his base with policy, impress swing voters with his competence and tear apart the president for his failures. His competence has become questionable and his failure narrative replaced by Bill Clinton's retelling of the past four years. All he can do is pull the president out of context and hope something sticks. Fortunately for Romney, his base will indulge in anything that makes the president look bad. But the outrage doesn't seem to interest anyone else.

...........................................SNIP"

[gopiscrap]

1. I love it!!!

[BlueStreak]

2. The David Frum comment is interesting. A real civil war in the GOP lies ahead

This really may be the straw that broke the camel's back. The billionaires liked the teabagging fundie crazies just fine when they thought that would help them wrest control from the Democrats. But the teabaggers cost the GOP the Senate in 20101 and seem to be doing the same this year. Moreover, the teabaggers forced the primary debate so far to the right that Romney was never able to recover.

On that latter point, conventional wisdom among proper Beltway political scientists proved, once again, to be dead wrong. Conventional wisdom is that you can say and do anything in primary season and then etch-a-sketch it away when the general season begins.

Didn't they lean anything from Governor Macaca? Everything is recorded now and it is just too easy to show the flip-slops in a way that is deeply damaging (as it should be.)Romney has plenty of his own screw-ups, but the biggest problem was a fundamental lack of understanding of how the the world works today. It isn't all about 30-second spots you can run on dead networks between Everybody Loves Raymond reruns. TV is not the center of everybody's attention anymore.

[Cosmocat]

13. hard to tell

how the republicans reformat.

I think the key here is, despite the Rs deranged hatred of him, and the media's down playing it, Barrack Obama is a pretty special person. He is really likeable personally, he has an AMAZINGLY even temperament, and has done a pretty darn good job as president.

while the media REALLY wanted to carry water for the GOP on making the economy out to be so horrible, it not THAT bad. Our overall standard of living is pretty high and does not correlate to the economic figures everyone is focusing on.

In that context, you have a very likeable and steady president.

The GOP believed their own world, as they are prone to, and in their world Barrack Obama is horrible. In THIS context, they thought all they had to do was run out this presidential looking guy with a business background and have him alternate between saying FREEDOM and man, does Obama suck, and it would win them an election.

They did not count on people actually looking at Romney's business background, and they did not count on people doing the math relative to the cutting taxes to the upper income earners while also balancing the budget.

Now, how will it look in the future when the party is not led by someone as strong as Barrack Obama?

They are not going anywhere. This is the party that won elections scaring people about putting flouride in water. They beat a decent, honorable and highly competent Al Gore by having the "liberal" media run the narrative of "who would you like to have a beer with?" Their president let 9-11 happen on his watch, but somehow they found a way to have the "liberal' media parrot their talking point about him keeping us safe, and somehow found a way to have the guy who dodged actual service in Vietnam be painted as TOUGH and RESOLUTE while the guy who served, was wounded and awarded medals for his service as weak.

They WILL take advantage of something like 9-11 or take advantage of cultural issues or SOMETHING to regain the national narrative. What position they have had in the past will not matter. They ran bush II on how bad a balanced budget was because government should not be in a position to buy up business, then won big two years ago running on the deficit THEY created.

Sadly, what they sell - fear, hatred, division, will always have a willing customer base.

[Cha]

3. Thanks for this link, applegrove!

Interesting analysis.

Now, I'm reading "5 Reasons Romney is a Much Worse Candidate than McCain" and we know McCain was not very good.

[yends21012]

4. And McCain was at least relatable

and stood for things unlike rmoney. Do you notice how rmoney is so stiff, especially in the neck? It's from the whiplash of quickly changing directions so often.

[Cha]

5. I do believe you have

a point regarding the stiffness of whiplash's neck.

[Drunken Irishman]

6. He also had a personal story that was far more impressive.

[believeinhope]

12. astute comment

Agreed. New poster here and probably not as far to the left as most others, but still enjoy the commentary and postings, especially yours.

For whatever else about him, McCain as you said had a personal story that everyone could admire and acknowledge. Before the economy collapsed McCain was actually ahead. We'll never know what would have happened if none of that financial collapse had happened. I think everyone can agree the final result would have been much closer than it ended up being. At best Obama wins a 2004 type win as opposed what he did win, and I think McCain had a good chance of winning a close one as well. I think without the collapse it would have come down to VA, OH and CO(McCain would have won IN, NC, and FL)

In fact, if you look at the RCP avgs, as of Sep 26, 2008, even after 2 weeks of the financial collapse and suspecnding his campaign, McCain was still ahead of where Romney is now. He was ahead of him nationally and in key states. That has to be a wake up call for the Romney campaign.

Romney is just Gordon Gekko/Michael Milken clone, a leveraged buyout/junk bond artist from the 80s. McCain and his family at least had that military service. Romney has never served nor has anyone in his family. People just see him as a rich guy who's leeched off the system for years without ever giving anything back.

Romney, from the very first time I saw him on tv back in 2007 has always struck me as a phony, just something off about him. the same feeling I got from John Edwards a while back.

Romney is pretty much the GOP's Kerry. Another boring, stiff rich guy from MA. No one in the base really liked him but he got the nomination based on "electability" because the experts said he was strong on the key issue of the election. In Kerry's case it was natl security due to his military background, in Romney's case it was the economy due to his business background.

In both cases that strength ended up being used against them and turned into a weakness. Kerry through the swift boat attacks that he ignored and waited far too long to address and Romney through the Bain/taxes attacks that he ignored and waited far too long to address.

In both cases the out party was motivated more by hatred of the incumbent than support for their own candidate. The dems in 04 loathed Bush and the GOP in 12 loathes Obama. Neither party really liked Kerry or Romney all that much.

The only thing is that after Kerry lost the dems went to the left and against the establishment and went with Obama over Clinton, someone who the right ended up disliking far more than Kerry. If the analogy holds, I see Jeb Bush playing the Clinton role in 2016, and I'll just leave it for discussion who best fits the Obama role.

[Mopar151]

7. McCain's worst day is about average for Rmoney nt

[rizlaplus]

8. There's one word that sums up the Romney Campaign so far....

Incoherent.

[GOTV]

9. Isn't the "unskew" site referenced by this article ...

... a joke site? They seem to think it's real. It's not is it?

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. Plenty of conservative bloggers are taking it seriously

Just type 'unskew' into Google News and look at the results. It's not a joke as in 'it's meant to make you laugh'; you might say it's a joke in the sense of 'it bears no relation to rational analysis or calculation'.

[GOTV]

11. I did not look closely enough ...

... I popped over there yesterday following some link and thought "ha ha ha, I get the joke" and left.

They really think they are revealing the truth by removing the liberal bias in the polls.

I got trolled by people who aren't even trolling. How lame is that?

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

14. Six: Mitt Romney is Still on the Ticket! (nt)

[VespertineIconoclast]

15. Thanks for the link! I'm also here to post this...